Advances in microprocessor, networking and related technologies have led to wide spread deployment and adoption of server-client based applications. Today, numerous real time services are offered by a plethora of servers for consumption by networked client devices of all kinds, including but not limited to computers, digital assistants, wireless mobile phones, and so forth.
However, with the proliferation of servers and client devices, and the ubiquitous access afforded to these devices by local, regional and wide area networks, such as the Internet, executables and data are vulnerable to harm. Whether the harm is due to damage caused by a virus, an unauthorized access, or simply due to natural occurrences such as exposure to the elements, the importance of executable and data integrity and security cannot be overstated.
Accordingly, substantial amounts of effort have been invested by the industry in protecting and securing the executables and data, including but not limited to ensuring the parties with whom a client/server engages in the provision or consumption of services is authentic and uncompromised. Numerous authentication, encryption/decryption, obfuscation, tamper resistant and other related techniques are known in the art.
However, the techniques known and practiced to date are substantially limited to authenticating the parties with whom one engages in transaction, protecting the parties directly participating in the transactions and the transactions themselves.
Increasingly, for many real time transactions, the protection or security offered by the prior art is insufficient. Accordingly, it is desirable to further improve the safety and security of client-server based real time transactions.